Chapter Two: The American Soccer Mom Society

"I do so solemnly pledge to daily strive to achieve a state of busy"



Oscar was born in July of 1979. It was time again to struggle, but I was consummately determined that this child of mine would not grow up with the dysfunctions that I had known. I had learned that I could determine my path and I would strive to choose the absolute best path to travel.

That journey would eventually lead me to reevaluate Richard, whom I had seen as a strange, walking contradiction. In the Spring of 1982, Richard and I had a two hour break in our class schedules in the middle of the afternoon. I saw him one day in the study Room on the first floor of the Student Union Building. He smiled and offered me a place to sit. I had spoken to him a time or two before but, as we both later confessed, neither of us thought we had anything to say to one another or that we would ever get past small talk.

To both our shock, we had a lot in common. We shared similar pasts and similar future goals. It would the beginning of a semester-long talk. We sought each other out during those breaks and shared our life experiences.

Richard was honest and he gave me the opportunity to be honest and set aside the facade I had carefully constructed. He laughed loudly, smiled a lot and was genuinely nice.

He and his family had actually taken vacations, a totally foreign concept to me then. I had never been anywhere past Corpus Christi and even those trips had been few within my life.

He and his siblings had gone on a bike tour from Dallas to DC. His storytelling abilities in the creation of word pictures was so incredible that to this day I can recall the sounds, the smells, the places, the tastes and the people he told me about as if I had lived them myself.

Through those many talks I learned that we were one coin, but he was the flip side of me. He was analytical/technical and I was global/creative in mind set. He seemed to have pieces of me that were missing. He had mathematical sense, money management skills, and a sense of absolutes and firm convictions. I knew that without these traits present in my life, it didn't matter how creative or capable of absorbing abstract information I was, I would not be able to achieve the goals I was setting.

So, Richard and I married in the Fall of 1982 and we would struggle again, together, to meet our goals of attaining degrees.

Richard graduated with a degree in Marine Biology/Chemistry in December of 1984, two months before the birth of our second child, Victoria Anne, and I graduated with a degree in Political Science/English in May of 1985, two weeks after the birth of our third child, Kathryn Grace.

Kathryn was born just in time to see me graduate from the University and just in time to see me get inducted into the American Soccer Mom Society(ASMS).

My induction into the ASMS began with the realization that my life was built on the shoulders of the many generations that came before me. Something instinctively gave me the desire to invest in the next generation.

It was as if I could look back and see an infinite line of people who stood behind me who had helped me get to my place in the line and I could look forward and see my children as the continuation of the line.

I've heard it said time and time again how parents want better for their children than they had for themselves. This desire to invest ourselves into our children is built into us. I wasn't the end of the line. I could not forsake the sacrifices of the many who stood behind me nor abandon those ahead of me and those who were yet to come.

This "investment" process has been going on since the beginning of children, but this generation of Soccer Moms is different and distinguished in its service.

We are a generation of women who were sold the bill of goods that lead us to believe that we can "have it all". We have tried our darndest to get it all and keep it all and stay sane.

We are torn between the expectation of feminist peer pressures to advance in the marketplace and this instictive desire to nurture and tend to every aspect of our children; their physical, emotional and spiritual development.

We are a generation of women acutely aware of the possibilities and opportunities before us in this more open society. We are also, frighteningly aware of how our interaction or absence in the lives of our children at any developmental point (and these are so vaguely defined) can adversely affect their entire lives.

And so, with a proper salute and a "can do" attitude, we wholeheartedly commit to figuring out how we will manage to give 110% to our families and 110% to our careers.

At the time of my induction into the illustrious ASMS, Oscar was five and in Kindergarten and Richard was teaching Seventh Grade Earth Science. We were active members of University Baptist Church and we had two babies to tend to. We were busy and getting busier.

@Jenni Vinson ....April 17, 1999